‘West,’ he growled, his voice rusty with sleep and thick with arousal.
‘Gideon? This is Nadia,’ said the voice on the other end of the line, but it sounded very different from the way it had sounded in his dream.
Suddenly, the significance of hearing that voice doused any lingering arousal better than a bucket of cold water.
‘What’s the matter? What’s happened to the babies?’ he demanded, already on his feet and trying to dress one-handed.
CHAPTER THREE
‘CALM down, Gideon,’ Nadia said firmly, her accent somehow more noticeable on the phone…or had he just become accustomed to it in person?
‘Don’t tell me to calm down,’ he snapped as he hopped on one foot, trying to get the other one into his jeans, then immediately felt ashamed of himself for taking his bad temper out on her. It wasn’t Nadia’s fault that he’d been having an erotic dream about her. ‘You wouldn’t have phoned me if something wasn’t wrong, so just tell me what it is.’
‘Adam’s temperature has gone up,’ she said baldly, and the impact of the news was like a blow to his chest.
‘What else?’ he demanded, his brain already running through all the possible reasons why his son’s temperature had risen.
‘It might be that he’s developing a respiratory problem…perhaps an infection?’
Gideon felt ill at the thought of that fragile body having to fight off an infection on top of struggling for life.
He was still tugging a thick sweatshirt over his head as he scooped his keys off the hall table. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ he said, even as he sent up a prayer that the roads would be relatively clear at this time of night. If the worst came to the worst, he didn’t want to be stuck in traffic when his son’s life was being overwhelmed by something as simple as a bacterial infection.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have listened to her,’ he snarled viciously as he put the flat of his hand on the horn and blasted his way past another motorist dithering at a junction as the lights changed. ‘I should have stayed with them.’
As if that would have made any difference to what Adam was going through, he admitted more sanely as he took the stairs up to the unit, not knowing whether it was the dread of what he was going to find or the memory of almost passing out that made him take them at a more sensible pace than last time.
‘How is he?’ he demanded from behind the mask he was donning as he joined the knot of people around the cot.
‘Struggling,’ Josh admitted sombrely as he looped the stethoscope over his head to dangle down either side of his chest.
‘And Amy?’ The two babies almost seemed to be holding on to each other and had never reminded him more of fledgling birds in a nest.
‘She seems to be unaffected so far, but—’
‘She’s unaffected, but she’s still sharing the cot?’ Gideon interrupted heatedly. ‘Are you trying to infect her, too?’
‘But,’ Josh repeated patiently, almost as if he was deliberately ignoring Gideon’s charge, ‘when we tried to take Amy away, to leave Adam isolated, they both became so distressed that we had to put her back in.’
‘What?’ Gideon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The babies were far too young to be able to express anything so sophisticated as loneliness…weren’t they?
‘It is true, Gideon,’ Nadia said earnestly, carefully holding her hands away from him as she stepped closer, then seeming to make a deliberate decision to contaminate her gloves as she rested her hands on his clenched fists. ‘The monitors went crazy on both of them, but especially on Amy. Her pulse and respiration went way up and her movements clearly showed that she was agitated. It was only when we put them back together that things calmed down again. And look,’ she said with a nod in their direction, ‘it’s almost as if they’re holding on to each other, as if to tell us to leave them alone.’
That was exactly the impression he’d had when he’d first caught sight of them, Gideon remembered, and the description was uncannily accurate. It was almost as if Amy was putting a protective arm around her little brother.
‘So, what happens now?’ Gideon asked wearily, wondering if this was the point when he had to resign himself to losing both of them. Biology being what it was, he’d actually allowed himself to hope that Amy might survive, even though her weaker male twin probably wouldn’t. But in spite of the fact that she’d been born marginally the stronger of the two, she was still far too small to need the added strain of fighting off the infection if she caught it from Adam. ‘What can we do to help them?
‘You sit with them, and talk to them, and pray and hope,’ Nadia said simply. ‘And we will continue to do everything we can to support their immature immune systems so they can combat the infection.’
‘Gideon, did you get any sleep at all?’ Nadia asked when, finally, there were just the two of them left by the cot.
‘Some,’ he said, and was surprised to feel the beginnings of a blush heating his face when he remembered what had been going on inside his head while he’d been sleeping.
He knew he had absolutely no control over the dreams that came to him, but that didn’t stop him feeling uncomfortable about talking to the woman who’d starred in them.
‘You really need to go back home and get some more,’ she advised gently. ‘You look even worse than when you left the department earlier.’
‘And you think I would be able to sleep, knowing what’s going on in that cot?’ he demanded, suddenly weary beyond belief.
‘I know you won’t,’ she admitted. ‘Not unless someone uses a…’ she mimed swinging something at his head while she apparently searched for the word she wanted ‘…cosh on you.’ She shook her head. ‘If I hadn’t promised that I would telephone you…’
‘I’m glad you kept your word,’ he said seriously. ‘Now I know that I can trust you…’ He glanced up at the big clock on the wall in the outer corridor, clearly visible through the glass wall of the nursery, and sighed heavily, torn by his body’s need for rest and his heart’s need to be here for his son.
‘Will you try to sleep?’ she asked. ‘If you don’t want to leave the hospital again, is there somewhere you could put your head down for a few hours?’
‘I can’t use the on-call bed in A and E, in case there’s a lull and the poor blighter on duty gets the chance to shut his eyes. No, I’ll just stick it out until Adam’s stable again.’
‘Unless you stretch out on the couch in the staffroom,’ Nadia suggested, then hurried on when he frowned. ‘I know it’s not ideal, but I’m sure that the other people who work on this unit would understand. They won’t mind going on the tips of their toes around you.’
On the tips of their toes…Gideon found himself smiling as he replayed the slightly awkward phrase that Nadia had used and wondered just how long she’d been living in England. It was just the occasional trip in her grammar and that exotic lilt to her accent that gave her away and made him speculate just what had brought her here.
Had she done her nursing training in her own country and travelled abroad to gain greater experience?
Perhaps her homeland was one of the countries that paid their nurses less than they could earn in the British system, and it was the money that had drawn her? Although, having watched her dedication to her little charges, he seriously doubted that financial gain had been her motivation.
Did she have family who were relying on her to send back a slice of her wages to help them, he speculated, or was she, like him, essentially alone in the world?
Gideon’s eyes popped open when he realised exactly what he was doing.
He never bothered to think about other people’s private lives. In fact, that was one of the things that Norah had thrown at him when she’d said she was leaving him—the fact that he was far too self-contained.
Well, perhaps after a lifetime of never feeling that he belonged anywhere, he had been. He certainly hadn’t been as devastated by her departure as his colleagues seemed to think he
should be.
So, was he different now?
Perhaps the birth of Adam and Amy had brought about some strange fundamental change in him that had him wanting to know more about the people around him.
Or perhaps it was just that there was something about Nadia that had caught his attention and had him imagining the two of them exchanging the sort of basic information that had never really interested him before.
And why had that happened now…with her? She certainly hadn’t given him the slightest indication that she would be willing to share such information. In fact, she must be the least inquisitive woman he’d ever met.
And the most self-contained, now that he thought about it. He knew almost nothing more about her than her name, and that had been given to him by someone else.
He shifted his position, trying vainly to find a comfortable place to put his shoulder without jamming his head under the wooden arm of the settee or having his legs hanging over the opposite end. This piece of furniture definitely wasn’t made for someone more than five and a half feet tall at the most, and he was at least a head taller than that.
If he were asleep, perhaps he wouldn’t notice the discomfort…at least, until he woke up with a stiff neck and a wrecked back…but while his thoughts were veering from worrying about Adam and Amy to wondering about Nadia, there was very little chance of dropping off.
Perhaps if he thought of a few questions to ask her, he’d have more luck, such as…where do you come from? And…What made you decide to come to England? And…Are you going out with anyone at the moment?
Whoa! Gideon brought his meandering thoughts to a screeching halt. Where had that last question come from?
He had absolutely no interest in the status of her private life because his own was non-existent, and would remain that way until those tiny babies were at least eighteen years old.
And now he was lying to himself, he admitted on a silent groan, knowing that there was no way he could switch off his unexpected attraction towards the intriguing woman caring for his babies…even though the fact of those babies’ existence should come between himself and any thoughts of a relationship with a woman.
Realistically, he knew that, at the very best, he was in for several months of alternating crises and triumphs as Adam and Amy fought their way towards an existence independent of high-tech help. At worst, he could be looking at watching those two precious babies failing in that struggle, and mourning when they finally gave up the fight.
Whichever path they were destined to travel, he knew from his own work in the same hospital that the patients and their families had a strange love-hate relationship with the professionals who were treating them. Illogical as it was, he knew just how often he’d been vilified when he’d been unable to give a patient another chance at life.
He liked to think that, having been the victim of it himself, he would know better than to blame Nadia if the unthinkable happened and one or both of the babies didn’t survive. But what if she were to suffer from that other curse of the medical profession…the unreasonable guilt that they hadn’t been able to do more for their patient, that they hadn’t been able to ‘save’ them?
His rusty chuckle startled him in the silence of the night when he realised that not only was he fantasising about a relationship with the woman, he’d also forecast the disastrous end of it, filled with recriminations when his babies didn’t survive.
‘But they are going to survive,’ he declared firmly, needing to hear the words spoken aloud. ‘Adam will battle off this infection, and the two of them will fight and develop and grow until they’re strong enough to leave the hospital and start the rest of their lives.’
‘Come on, my little rabbits,’ Nadia crooned as she changed first one and then the other tiny disposable nappy.
She’d done this task so many thousands of times in her career that the process was completely automatic, but she still marvelled at how very fine a premature baby’s skin could be; still had to be so very careful that she didn’t scratch or abrade it, leaving a wound through which an infection could gain entry.
‘Together we can take care of everything,’ she murmured, unconcerned whether her words emerged in her first or her second language. The babies wouldn’t care. They would respond to the tone of her voice rather than what she was saying. ‘Together, we can do it. Together, we can make sure that you both grow big and strong, so you can go home with your daddy.’
She checked the positioning of each of the monitors and the fine plastic tubes that conveyed the various fluids in and out of their bodies.
‘Hopefully, it won’t be long before you don’t need help with your breathing, then we’ll be able to hear your voices properly. Then you’ll be able to shout to tell us when you’re hungry,’ she promised. ‘Maybe, by then, we’ll have found out whether the two of you have inherited your daddy’s gorgeous green eyes and—’
A soft sound behind her had her glancing over her shoulder straight into the eyes in question, currently sporting a definite gleam of amusement.
‘Gorgeous green eyes?’ he repeated, teasingly, and she felt a wash of heat sweep up from her throat and into her face.
Why couldn’t she have been using her own language when she’d said that, she mourned, or at least have finished talking to his babies before he came close enough to hear what she was saying?
‘I…’ She had to stop to clear her throat, her brain frantically searching for something to say that would minimise the embarrassment of the situation—although he didn’t seem in the least bit embarrassed. In fact, he seemed almost pleased to have heard her admiring words. ‘I always talk nonsense to the babies when I’m doing things to them, so I don’t give them a shock when I touch them.’
His raised eyebrow told her he didn’t buy her gabbled excuse, but he was enough of a gentleman not to challenge her on it. Or perhaps it was that he had more important things on his mind.
‘How is Adam?’ he demanded, already reaching for his son’s file. ‘Are the antibiotics working? Is his breathing easier? Is his temperature down? Has Amy caught it from him—whatever it is—or is she still all right?’
Nadia paused a second to absorb the avalanche of questions before she replied in the same staccato way.
‘Better. Apparently. Yes. Yes. No, and yes.’
For several seconds she had the pleasure of knowing that she’d rendered him speechless, then he laughed and those gorgeous green eyes crinkled at the corners and it was her turn to have difficulty finding her tongue.
‘OK. I deserved that,’ he conceded. ‘But I would be grateful for a little more detail.’
She couldn’t help smiling back, or the feeling of amazement that trickled through her when she realised that she’d actually dared to tease a man for the first time. But she absolutely refused to think about the strange squiggly feeling that she got deep inside when he smiled at her that way.
‘Adam seems to be doing a little better,’ she told him, hoping that he couldn’t hear in her voice that her pulse was racing in her throat. Was it actually due to excitement this time, rather than the dread to which she’d grown so accustomed? ‘The antibiotics appear to be working because his temperature has come down a little and his breathing is marginally easier. And, so far, it seems as if Amy is still clear and unaffected by the bug.’
She saw his shoulders slump in evident relief and realised that this was a father who really cared about his babies. His insistence on spending so much time with them certainly wasn’t just for show…to prove to his hospital colleagues his credentials as a concerned parent.
Although why she should have doubted him, she had no idea. Except in moments of extreme stress he’d never been anything less than courteous towards her or any of the other staff, and as for the way he’d hovered over those two tiny creatures, driving himself way beyond exhaustion…that should have been proof enough that he was nothing like Lasz—
No! Not him! She wouldn’t…couldn’t…even put the two me
n in the same thought. They were so completely opposite in every way that it was hard to believe that they could even exist on the same planet.
Her hands froze in mid-air as that thought ballooned inside her head, overwhelming in its significance.
Yes, Gideon was totally different from Laszlo, even though he shared the same basic genetic make-up of the other half of the human race. Even after all she’d gone through and her determination that she’d never risk getting into the same situation again, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Gideon was someone of whom she need never feel afraid.
But what did that mean?
Was it just that he was a very rare…even unique…man, one who didn’t feel the need to demonstrate his superiority over any female with the rough end of his tongue or his fists?
She shuddered at the memories that she was never quite able to banish and tried to focus, instead, on the fact that she was here, in London, working in a hospital where her hard-earned skills were valued every day by her colleagues and each of the tiny babies she tried to nurture into healthy life.
Every time she waved a family off as they took their precious baby home for the first time, Nadia felt a deep sense of satisfaction for a job well done, but sometimes, in the dark of the night, she wondered if she would ever feel completely fulfilled by what she did.
Her greatest fear was that only carrying a baby of her own would do that, in which case she was doomed for ever to remain unsatisfied because there was no chance that she would ever become pregnant again.
So, she would just have to take her pleasure in touching and holding each new charge put into her care, letting herself fall just a little in love with them and having another little piece of her heart broken as they left her to go home with their parents.
Occasionally, she would feel the claws of jealousy rip into her when she knew that she would be able to take care of these precious beings far better than their own mothers would; that she had so much love to give that she could probably even love them more, but that would never happen. She would always be the one left with a wistful smile on her face when the doors closed behind them, the smile fading as she turned to begin the essential rigorous cleaning of everything in the bay before her next little charge arrived.
A Family for His Tiny Twins Page 4